Design and Evaluation of Hybrid Composite Plates for Ballistic Protection: Experimental and Numerical Investigations

In this paper, hybrid composite plates for ballistic protection were investigated experimentally and numerically, with a target to reduce the weight of currently used body armor inserts and, at the same time, satisfy the requirements of the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) ballistic protection standards. The current study has three phases to improve the ballistic plate’s energy absorption capability. The first phase is devoted to studying the effect of the material types, including three different fibers: carbon fiber, date palm fiber, and Kevlar fiber. The second phase is dedicated to studying the effect of hybridization within layers. The two previous phases’ results were analyzed to optimize the material based on the hybrid composite ballistic plate’s maximum energy absorption capability. The commercial finite element software package LS-DYNA was employed for numerical modeling and simulation. The hybrid composite ballistic plate could absorb more impact energy than the non-hybrid Kevlar plate with the same area density from the numerical simulation results. This study provides lighter-weight ballistic inserts with a high protection level, making movement easier for the wearer. The numerical results were verified by comparing results of a plate made of 40 layers of Kevlar with an actual ballistic test. The results indicated that the simulation results were conservative compared to the ballistic test.